The Shape of Snow
by Servant of SHEVAL
Summary: Songfic to a piece by an artist that noone will recognize. One snowwy car ride home on a winter night after one of Matt's concerts gets Tai to thinking...


**Author's Beginning Note Thingy:** Well, would ya look at that? My first dabble into Digimon fanfic... and it's a songfic. How lame of me.

Yeah, so this is a song by a completely unknown artist, 'The Bookdrop Bees'. And the story behind it is... I was contemplating Taito/Yamachi... and all of a sudden this song popped into my head. I couldn't remember all the words, except for the first few lines, which reminded me very much of Matt... and that I liked the song as of the last time I'd listened to it. So I went back, and... at about 6-o-clock in the morning, when I should have been either sleeping or working on my existing FF7 fanfics, I wrote this. Hope you like, despite the obscureness.

---

Tai escaped the drilling cold wind threatening to whisk his hat right off his head by practically diving into the building, his shoes slick with caked-on sleet and wet ice. He nearly fell on his way through the door but managed to save himself, hurrying down the hall toward the small auditorium where he was supposed to be sitting twenty minutes ago... a reserved space in the front row. His absence _would_ be noticed.

Swearing lightly under his breath as he shed his heavy coat, scarf, and hat on a bench by the doors, he tried to open them as silently as he could while going in.

The room was dark except for a small circle on the faraway stage, and it was lit so starkly that the already pale skin of the man standing within was made to take on an even whiter, papery color, his hair shining platinum by comparison. For a moment Tai just stood there and watched, awed by the sight, and smiled.

There was Matt, eyes closed in euphoric concentration, strumming sadly on his guitar. The instrument rested loosely in his careful hands, always casual, each finger curled to just the right space as he passed flawlessly between chords. His voice poured out like honey, and Tai thought that the amplification of the microphone was far too crude to do it justice. But despite this initial vision of perfection, he then managed to make out something else...

...the crowd was sparse tonight... and to some degree he expected it. It was the last show, and the weather was terrible. Those few who'd actually had the intent to come to the performance where the singer's voice would be most tired-out had probably been discouraged by the veritable blizzard raging on outdoors. Then he noticed that Matt stood solitary up onstage, which was unusual. Normally he was surrounded by other shadows - silhouettes, the rest of the members of the band. Now there were none, and he looked very small and lonely up there by himself.

_The singer on the stage  
__has five guitars to play.  
__Sometimes he's with his band,  
__but tonight he played alone_

Tai took a seat in back - so as not to cause a disturbance jostling all the way up to where his seat was reserved - and closed his eyes, effectively starving them of the already unwanted sight of Matt up there. Call it empathy (hardly) but he always got the butterflies churning in his gut whenever his friend performed, nervous for him, since the singer himself was always too preoccupied with his own self-image to be. Instead he just listened to the smooth, soulful tones that drifted softly up out of the pit where he played.

The show ended but the lights didn't come up... and it was unrecognized by applause as the people - one by one, here and there - began making their meandering exits. Tai lingered, his feet up on the back of the chair in front of him. Finally, when the last shaded figure had ambled past him and out of the auditorium through the door he sat next to, he got up and made his own way in the opposite direction, down the slanting aisle to the stage, just as the spotlight went off, dousing the last illumination in the vacant room, save for the ferocious red 'EXIT' sign.

He froze in his spot and whispered another swear, and couldn't see his hand an inch in front of his face.

Not an instant later, though, a bright flame erupted from the emptiness, briefly producing the image of Matt's face beside him. The fire flickered and danced across the surface of something white and inanimate for a second, before catching at last, and he clicked the lighter off leaving only the dimmest ember still sparking and floating there, seemingly in midair. A puff of aromatic, hot smoke slithered across Tai's face, dry and enticing.

A moment passed in silence... then, "Tough crowd tonight." Tai laughed nervously as he squinted blindly into the dark.

Another silence, another puff, the scent of burning cloves searing the air and the inside of his nostrils.

"You made it." Matt sounded sarcastically surprised, and not the least bit apologetic for his smoke-belated answer.

The brunette flashed a wide grin that he knew his companion couldn't see and replied "Yeah..."

_and you said you don't mind driving home._

Matt grimaced slightly at the leftover paper cups and bags remaining from previous visits to fast-food stores that remained in Tai's car, shoving a select few to the side as he lowered himself into the vehicle. "Come on, man..." he groaned "This place is a sty..."

"Is not." Tai protested, flipping the end of his scarf over a shoulder, pulling the front up over his nose as a buffer to the wind, "And what do you think you're doing?"

"Driving." Matt quickly answered, his lips pressed tight to keep ahold of the cigarette in his mouth. "You did a crappy parking job, and judging by the fact that you got here late, the ice must've given you more than a little bit of trouble." he looked up at his friend, still hovering protectively by the open door, peering past the rims of his shaded glasses. "Which figures..." he went on to say thoughtfully, after another long - and apparently satisfying (he took a long, contented grey sigh out) - drag, "...since I can see you still haven't bothered to buy winter tires. Get in."

Obediently, the boy shut the door with a slam, walked precariously around the front end, and entered through the door on the opposite side, slouching down in his seat and folding his arms across his chest. His breath was as visible in the chill air as Matt's was while filled with nicotine. "But you are _not_ smoking those things inside _my_ car." he exerted some little bit of authority.

Matt almost audibly groaned, rolled the window down, took one more deep breath, blew the contents out into the storm, ripped the cigarette away from his mouth and tossed the stub out into the snowbank on the edge of the sidewalk, where it fizzled and died almost instantly. The window went back up.

"Seatbelt." He droningly reminded.

Tai reached behind himself and secured the strap with a hollow click before they took off into the twilight.

_The double yellow light  
__and the thin, stale smell of coffee..._

Tai gripped the one cup (the one in the cupholder) that had its drink still in it between his hands, but the liquid inside was already lukewarm and therefore useless. At last he chanced to look up at Matt, who was driving in absolute silence, making for the edge of the city at record speeds. The wipers squeaked along the windshield, smearing dapples of fluffy snow away as they went.

"So." he started, sick of the silence at last, "Where was everybody else?"

Matt snorted, and it seemed like his foot went down just a little bit harder on the gas pedal, "Don't ask. It's too long of a story." he idly fiddled with the pocket on the inside of his coat, before remembering he was forbidden to smoke inside, grimacing, and pressing his foot down even more.

Tai returned the cup to its old spot, gripping onto the sides of his seat, instead, with his newly freed hands until his knuckles turned white. Whether this was from anxiety to the speed at which they were rocketing, or because of the sight of Matt - casual and yet tense in his black leather jacket, the dark glasses drooping far below the bridge of his nose, the hair still golden and _just_ messy enough to look deliberate - was hard to tell. His dull brown gaze dazzled over every aspect of the other boy's figure, slim legs - a little too long for the current placement of the carseat - extending down to the floor, his delicate (yet calloused) fingers with their impossibly gentle grip on the steering wheel.

He sighed and turned his head, forcibly looking away. His windswept hair crushed up against the window as he leaned his head against it, staring mournfully out as they reached the city limits and passed into the light woodland beyond.

_The trees keep a secret of mine  
__as they're rushing past my view  
__and we said we don't know what to do._

The drive took forever. Or that's what it seemed like. Even with Matt going at his ridiculous speeds. It seemed like hours before Tai set his eyes once again on familiar streets, though snow-drenched now, as they were passing out of twilight into dark. The apartment complex was in view, a drab rectangle of evenly spaced lights out on the horizon, and they reached it in time. It was at this point that Tai realized the evening was over, done, wasted... and though the last however-long-it-was had _seemed_ grueling, in this instant he wished that it hadn't already stopped.

Almost as expected, Kari and TK were waiting out there in front for them, either endearingly loyal, or they'd locked themselves out again, because they shivered through their smiles in the cold. The near-identical (except in height) prints of twin snow-angels were stamped into the ground at their feet, just spanning the very first layer of fresh powder, and the kids looked _so proud_...

_At the far end of a companionless stroll  
__I finally saw the shape of snow,  
__cut from white paper through children's eyes._

...and Tai was once again reminded of why this wouldn't work, retracted his hovering hand from where it had almost reached Matt's, casually slung across the gearshift. Thank God he hadn't noticed... or at least hadn't mentioned. He drew a breath in and switched the position of that hand to the door, but found it locked. The brunette looked inquisitively over at his friend, blocked from his retreat.

Matt was staring coolly back, but there was something in his eyes... "You know..." he mentioned quietly, as if it were some secret the now-confused siblings outside were not meant to hear, "...it wouldn't be too much trouble for me to take you all the way home. Kari and TK are big kids, they'll be fine here by themselves for one night." something he never expected the overprotective blonde to say "And I could stay at your place. We haven't really... seen eachother for a long time, after all, right?" he quirked his head to one side slightly, awaiting a response to his uncharacteristic concession, "I mean, if that's okay..."

_You offer me shelter from threatening skies_

Tai mashed his lips together unsurely in what he imagined could probably be classified as a wince. There was a light knock on the window beside his head, and he looked over to see Kari, red-cheeked and bewildered peering in at him. "Matt, I don't think-..."

"Allright." the immediate answer cut him off, and in a split second, the door was open and Matt was out, pulling his guitar case out of the back along with him. Tai dumbly shifted over into the newly-abandoned seat, closing the door to the cold just as Kari slipped in where he'd just been. By the time he looked over at the retreating figure of his friend, Matt had already seized TK's hand and lit up once more, the grey smog cloud lingering about his face, poisoning his perfect pale skin and tinting his golden hair.

_but the warmth of the car ride home  
__can't carry me when I'm alone._

Tai grimaced and slammed on the gas barely after Kari had even shut her door, not wanting to even look at it anymore. The spray of snow kicked up from the spinning tires alerted Matt's brief attention, but only to the back end of the little blue automobile as it sped away, swerving around a corner.

"What was that all about?" Kari asked, sitting back as they pulled into the parking lot of their own apartment building, several blocks away.

"Nothing." her brother said to her, a little curtly. "Go inside... I'll be right up."

She frowned worriedly, muttered an unenthusiastic 'okay' and slowly turned her back on the boy, beginning a long, reluctant trek up the stairs.

Tai turned his face to the gathering clouds. A drop of liquid - heavy, wet liquid - landed on his cheek. The temperature must have risen just enough...

...within moments it all began to fall, as if a seam had just ripped open up in the sky and the clouds had let loose, their insides just falling out, down to earth. The wet winter rain immediately washed all the snow away, and made the frozen ice-monoliths pockmarked and cracked, their once crystalline beauty now far beyond repair. So much for winter...

_The rain that fell tonight  
__was the kind that stings your eyes._

Eventually, after he was already soaked to the bone by the freezing water, to the level that he expected he'd have a fever (or at least a cold) come tomorrow, Tai began to wonder why his face felt like it was burning. He wondered why, even though he blinked whenever a drop came near his eyes, they still itched, wondered why the liquid that made it into his mouth tasted so salty...

_I'm not sure what I'm confused about  
__but I said I'd wait you out_

"Tai!" he heard a voice calling from faraway and above. He instinctively dragged a wet sleeve across his eyes, though for what reason he still wondered...

...looking up, he saw a dim figure hanging out of a high window, right where their apartment should be: Kari. "Y-yeah?" and his voice broke slightly when he spoke. The reply probably wasn't even loud enough to carry up to her amid the million pounding droplets of rain...

"Tai, what're you doing?" she yelled, "Come inside!"

"Yeah..." he said, looking down at his shoes as if staring at them would make his feet start moving, "...I'm coming." achingly slow, as if with rusted and frozen joints (the latter was probably at least somewhat true), he lifted one, put it back down ahead, and shifted his weight forward... walking. What a concept.

It seemed to take forever just to make it to the door, but Kari was gone, done with shouting encouragements, so he supposed it must've actually gone fast enough to keep her satisfied. He lifted a bare hand up, settled his palm on the smudged glass and pressed in. It swung open and exposed him to the rush of heat from inside, slicing its way out of the growing opening in a desperate marathon to make it outside. He paused there, in the open doorway, for a second, caught within the threshold of the dark rainy city, and the somewhat stale air inside, with its honey-colored light and it's musty odor down here on the first floor, mixed in with the tiniest but of backed up exhaust from the boilers.

Smoke... smelled like Matt... and he almost felt a little bit guilty for declining that earlier offer. It sure would've been... nice to see him. He'd seemed too excited about the proposition, and he, _he_, the very one who was banking on rare opportunities like that had dashed those hopes. Poor Matt... but...

_But I know you won't mind driving home._

Tai sniffed (just the beginning of that fever and cold) and again wiped his eyes (rain must've managed to get in them). No... he shouldn't worry...

_...and I know you won't mind driving home._

Matt would be just fine.

He sighed and turned at last, letting the door slam shut of its own accord behind him as he made a dripping path across the lobby and up the stairs, starting on the long, long climb to his room, reminding himself...

...Matt would be just fine.

_...driving home..._


End file.
